Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Yesterday Peter Jackson and team unveiled Neil Finn’s song from The
Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Today, Empire has the full soundtrack for
your listening pleasure. Listen, enjoy and get a taste of what we’re in
for come December 13 when the film hits screens

Friday, November 9, 2012

This is something I wrote a few months ago. I plan to put forth some more ideas about abortion, examining the Christian arguments against it, discussing "personhood", etc.. The following specifically deals with the pro-life push to ban abortion even when a woman's life or health is imperiled. I am not arguing for or against abortion access in other cases in this piece. I will put forth my thoughts on that elsewhere.

Q. Why should a pregnant woman have the right to end a
pregnancy if her health or life is imperiled?

A. A pregnant woman is as much of a human being and
therefore has as many rights as the rest of us, including to choose medical
care that will save her life and health. To say otherwise is to create a
special subclass, reserved for pregnant women, such that they must die or
sacrifice their health rather than get life saving or health-preserving care.
Nowhere else, even when lives can be preserved by the use of someone else's
body and the subsequent inconvenience or death to them, do people contemplate
depriving some people of life or healthcare access to better others.

We may consider it a tragic situation when a woman would
have to decide to preserve her own health or life and abort, or continue the
pregnancy and die or end up with life-long complications. But it’s not a unique
situation. You and I, and every one of us, make that choice every day that we
do not give up our own organs to save other people’s lives. There would
probably be someone alive today, somewhere, if I had given up “spare” organs;
maybe if I donated blood more often. But the fact that I could be saving
someone’s life while imperiling or even discomforting mine is not sufficient to
compel me to do it.

As long as one being is inside another (if the fetus could
survive without the mother, there would be no problem), one of those two will
have greater rights than the other. When we decide that a woman does not have
the right to save her own life or well-being, we simply take those same rights
we all enjoy away from her and give them to the fetus (which, when the fetus is
far pre-term, is pointless and decidedly vicious – as in the case of that poor
girl who died recently after her cancer treatments were delayed so long,
because she was 9 weeks pregnant [http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/25/world/americas/dominican-republic-abortion-teen/index.html;
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57496613-10391704/dominican-republic-teen-at-center-of-abortion-debate-dies-from-leukemia-complications/]).
No matter what we do, we are making a choice – whether that is to give the
fully formed, sentient, feeling woman the rights, or to give them to the fetus.
We necessarily must give preference to one of them. In every other situation,
we always give preference to the person whose body would be used for the
preservation of the other person. It may be decidedly sad, but so is the fact
that people die all the time because they need organs that other people have
and won’t give up – even in death. And yet we do not, nor would we, compel
someone to die or suffer grievous bodily harm to sustain the life or well-being
of another person. We do not even compel the dead to give their organs to the
living. The rights of a dead person, then, are considered to be of greater
import than the rights of a living pregnant woman under personhood laws.

Nor does the fact that the mother was willing to be pregnant
(excluding cases where this is not the case, such as rape pregnancies) mean
that she loses the rights we all have. If I agreed to give up a kidney to save
someone’s life, and discovered that so doing would kill me, no one would – or
should be allowed to – compel me to do so, whatever promise or consent I had
given – and even if my refusal meant the death of the potential recipient.

The pro-life movement did itself a grievous disservice when
it decided to pit the right to life and health of women against the rights to
life of fetuses. We all have a basic right to use our own bodies for our own
survival, even if that end the life of someone else (whose survival would need
and imperil our own body) – or to choose to save the other person. As it should
be. It is a right and a privilege, and not one to be taken lightly; but it is a
choice that should be each individual’s, and theirs alone. No one should be
able to force an independent person to surrender the use of their body, health
and/or life for the sake of a being dependent on that, and we recognize that in
all spheres of life except pregnancy. And, curiously enough, the pro-life
movement only asks this outwardly imposed sacrifice of pregnant women.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

As of some time last night, the GOP
lost its second presidential election to Barack Obama. The first
time, it was perhaps more inevitable, but this time seems much less
so. This time, the GOP was facing an incumbent president, who had the
usual lot of issues facing an incumbent -- promises not kept and
mistakes made – and not a candidate who promised great things and
had no failures to weigh him down. Candidate Obama ran on new ideas,
new direction, and change. He didn't have a record to point to,
promises he'd made and not been able to keep, and mistakes he'd made.
He had inspiring rhetoric, and the promise to break from financial
decisions that had not done us any good. His opponent, to many
people, symbolized all those things that had not worked. This time,
though, the shoe was on the other foot. All the optimism in the world
can't undo high unemployment, or bring down the ever increasing costs
of fuel, or erase the deficit. So now, disappointed and perhaps
embittered by yet another politician proving to be so much less than
he promised, voters would head to the voting booths again. With that
much working against the incumbent, it would seem like an excellent
time to be the challenger.

Factor into that the 2010 midterm
elections, and the GOP victories picked up then, to say nothing of
Scott Walker and his recall victory in WI, and it seemed a seismic
shift was under way, from “hope and change” to fiscal
responsibility and “tea party austerity.” It's hard to imagine a
better scenario for the challenger.

And yet, rather than winning, the
Republican candidate, and the ticket, was pretty thoroughly trounced.
Tea partiers and social conservatives around the nation lost; the
folks who were meant to grab critical senate seats lost; and the
party's presidential nominee lost. So how did the GOP go from poised
to win, to another defeat?

Appealing to the hardcore base, and
paying for the sins of his party

After John McCain's defeat, the party
seems to have come to the conclusion that moderation is bad, and that
moderates are a losing ticket. Thus the primaries saw an array of
whackadoodles, a veritable freak show lineup, soak up the spotlight
for their fifteen minutes, until, at last, they each proved too
ridiculous, and the next one was brought forward. At last Mitt
Romney, the Massachusetts moderate, was welcomed most begrudgingly,
and only after every one else either dropped out right away or proved
too volatile, stupid, insane, or some combination of the previous, to
lead the ticket. But by that time, moderate Mitt had morphed into
“severely conservative” Mitt to prove that he had what it took to
lead the new party. Thus pro-choice Mitt Romney became anti-choice,
anti-Planned Parenthood Romney; pro-Obamacare type health care Mitt
Romney became anti-Obamacare type health care Mitt Romney; fiscally
moderate Romney became “let's cut taxes without a way to pay for
it” Romney. In short, most positions that Mitt Romney had ever held
were reversed, and the principled moderate became a shape shifting
“severe conservative” – that neither his base nor the rest of
the electorate could respect.

This process was only furthered by the
degrees of crazy that preceded him. Let's not forget that prior to
Romney heading the ticket, “no minimum wage” Bachmann, “it's
the president's job to preach the 'evil' of birth control”
Santorum, “there's a snake in my boot” Perry, “moon colonies”
Gingrich and “let me put my hand up your skirt” Cain all had a
turn at the top. With each new wave of bonkers, Romney had to (or
felt he had to, at least) morph into some new version of severely
conservative. And, in the process, he alienated, well, lots and lots
of people.

More importantly than the people Romney
himself alienated (if only because of the mass of those affected), however, were the overwhelming numbers his party
alienated – women, Hispanics, students, people with pre-existing
conditions, the poor, etc., etc. Remember that (at one point) viable
candidates were running around the country telling gay mothers that
their kids would be better off with a dad in jail than a lesbian mom,
university education being accessible to everyone is snobbish, that
birth control and gays are evil, and that a kid who can't afford
extremely expensive medication has no right to life, unlike a rape
fetus (Santorum); that there should be no minimum wage (Bachmann &
Gingrich); that poor kids should work as school janitors (Gingrich);
that we should eliminate the department of education, and two others
(Perry); that abortion should be illegal regardless of anything (all
of the above); etc., etc., etc. More than Romney's morphing
positions, the positions of his fellow Republican contestants, to say
nothing of the Republican legislators who made a point of going after
women, gays, etc., tarnished Romney.

Lack of minority support

As part of the above, Romney lost and
lost bad amongst minorities. Hispanics preferred Obama by 44 points.
Women by 18. These wins proved crucial to Obama, and extremely
detrimental to Romney.

War on Women, and an 18 point gender
gap

Again, women preferred Obama to Romney
by 18 points. Why? Because, aside from alienating women over abortion
access (which Romney said he would allow in the cases of rape, incest
and the life of the mother, although much of the party opposes it
even in those cases), Republicans were hard at work these last few
years proving that their ideas about women were antiquated at best.
Republicans opposed equal pay measures, with some Republicans, like
Glenn Grotham of Wisconsin, suggesting that there is no problem –
simply a preference amongst men for money. Others suggested that,
while pay is disproportionate, this is right and fair, as this is
simply the market at work; and others chose to deny the issue
altogether. Those who supported it in principle opposed it in
practice, while offering no solution of their own. Birth control
became a focal point – from Santorum's insistence that the
president should be tasked with illuminating its “evils” to the
Blunt amendment and numerous other state-wide movements to prevent
access, allow employers to fire employees on the pill, etc., etc.
Then, of course, there were the infamous “rape” statements. Paul
Ryan – who Romney, in a horribly misguided move, chose as his VP
nominee – declared that rape was just “another means of
conception”; Todd Akin insisted that “legitimate rape” doesn't
result in pregnancies, and Steve King informed us that he had never
heard of anyone getting pregnant through incest. Tom Smith thought
that his daughter conceiving a baby through consensual sex while not
being married was the same thing as her being forcibly impregnated by
rape. Joe Walsh told us that there is no possible way that a woman's
life can be endangered by pregnancy, so he is pro-life in all cases.
Richard Mourdock declared that God intended rape pregnancies, and
John Koster didn't think “the rape thing” was sufficient reason
for a woman to get an abortion. Mitt Romney declared multiple times
that one of his first acts would be to completely defund Planned
Parenthood.

If you think that women deserve equal
pay for equal work; should be able to decide when and if they'll be
pregnant without government interference; shouldn't die because
saving their lives will be damaging to a fetus; can get pregnant
through rape, and should not be disdained or regarded as liars when
it happens; this can only serve to dampen your enthusiasm for the
Republican ticket. It dampened women's enthusiasm to the tune of an
18 point gender gap in Obama's favor. And while Chris Christie seemed
content to dismiss women's concerns about GOP policies regarding them
with “we won't pander to women”, it seems that when the GOP
stopped listening to women, women stopped listening to the GOP.

Raiding the cuckoo farm

Remember what I was saying about the
rape crew? Them, Santorum, Bachmann, the Man on the Moon, and all the
state-level GOP crazies helped sink the party. I'm talking about the
people who put forth all manner of bizarre propositions throughout
the nation – from no lunch breaks and removal of domestic violence
protections (the removal was strongly protested by law enforcement,
btw) in New Hampshire, to a move to let doctors lie to patients even
if they would incur severe bodily harm if they thought it would
prevent an abortion in Kansas, to the multitude of anti-Hispanic
moves in Arizona, to proposals to classify single motherhood as a
factor in child abuse in WI, the crazies were making their voices
heard. The problem? They were Republicans. And such a deluge of
anti-woman, anti-Hispanic, and pro-business at the cost of everyone
else proposals helped only to solidify the image that Republicans
were anti-woman, anti-minority and anti-middle class. Not a winning
strategy.

Paul Ryan

Mitt Romney's choice of Paul Ryan, the
economic Darwinist and arch-Randian of our day, as his VP candidate
is baffling. Yes, he received a boost of popularity amongst the
hardcore base. But that same base so overwhelmingly loathed Obama
that he already had their support! By choosing a guy whose solution
to economic difficulty is to eliminate all capital gains taxes (look
it up – it's part of his “roadmap to recovery”) while selling
off national parks to private entities for commercial development,
cutting Pell Grants, and giving big credits and breaks to Big Oil,
Romney shot himself in the foot. That might appeal to the wealthy
within his party, but it doesn't appeal to the middle class; and you
can't buy votes. Plus, Ryan brought some more hardcore anti-women
crazy to the party. Amongst other things, he cosponsored a bill that
would grant “personhood” to a fertilized human egg – meaning
that even a measure to save a woman's life, such as neutralizing an
ectopic pregnancy, would be illegal, because in saving the woman's
life, you would have to kill a “person” (nevermind that both the
embryo and the woman are going to die anyway if you don't intervene).
Ryan has also made his objection to “life of the mother”
exceptions well known. Again, he would prefer women die rather than
end a pregnancy that will kill them (and the embryo/fetus). And while
he might justify his actions by blaming those beliefs on God, it's a
hard sell to convince people that withholding life saving medical
care from a loved one is a good thing to do because your God tells
you so.

Lack of specifics

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan gave us very
little in the way of specifics. They were going to cut taxes and
close loopholes and eliminate deductions, for instance; which ones,
though? No answer. Will the mortgage deduction be preserved? No
answer. We're most likely going to bring our troops back home; but
what could keep us there? No answer.

In the end, much of the message came
down to, “The other guy screwed up, and we're not going to! We'll
fix it all. We won't tell you how, exactly, so trust us.” The
problem? The numbers didn't add up, and people tend to like when
numbers do that.

The 47%; the moochers; the producers
vs. parasites

Romney's assertion that 47% of the
country are a bunch of worthless dependents, unsurprisingly, did him
no favors. Nor did Republican endorsement of this Randian sentiment.
It might sit well with wealthy donors to think of “the little
people” as parasites and moochers, but I think I speak for most
people when I say the rest of us don't think of our soldiers, the
elderly, the disabled, etc., in these terms. And when your candidate
and talking heads express those sentiments, it doesn't go over well.
Additionally, these comments aligned so well with Ayn Rand's
viewpoints that the attraction between Romney and Ryan (who is a long
time Rand devotee, as he has stated many times) becomes clearer; but
not more comforting.

Hurricane Sandy (& Chris
Christie)

Hurricane Sandy gave President Obama a
chance to show that he has what it takes to lead in a time of crisis.
Chris Christie went out of his way to show his gratitude toward the
president, and, perhaps unsurprisingly when one considers his
propensity to hijack moments for his own glorification, his own
ability to put aside partisan politics and lead in time of crisis. He
was dismissive of Romney and eloquent in his praise of Obama. The
result? Obama and Chris Christie both show that they have what it
takes to reach across the aisle and put politics aside, and Romney is
nowhere to be seen.

Obviously, Romney had no part *to* play
in this scene – and so his absence is entirely appropriate. But it
painted a very good picture of his opponent, and made him seem
irrelevant. This was beyond his or the GOP's control, but it was the
final nail in his coffin.

The above explains, I think, why Romney
lost. But it wasn't just Mitt Romney who lost. Sure, he was the top
of the ticket, but it's worthy of note that the “rape guys” (most
of whom were previously poised to win) lost too. Akin, Smith,
Mourdock, etc. – they're all toast. Gay marriage was approved in
several states, and a measure to oppose it overturned in one. Even
tea party firebrand Allen West lost re-election, while Michelle
Bachmann barely held onto her seat. “Severely conservative” Mitt
Romney, hardcore social conservatism and anti-woman, pro-rape
politics took a sound beating yesterday.

The midterm election victories left the
Republican party with the mistaken sense that far-right wing politics
were the way to go. America wants fiscally responsible leaders, and
the Tea Party was elected when it preached those principles. It, and
the GOP, was defeated when it beat the rape drum, and marched to the
hard-core social conservative, “producers versus parasites” tune.
My hope, as an American and a Republican, is that the GOP will get
its act together, and leave the antiquated ideas about the role and
right-to-life, dignity and equality of women, the Randian economic
principles, the obsession with fetuses over sentient human beings,
the anti-gay fervor, etc., in the dust heap, and focus on things that
will truly help America and Americans. My fear is that from the ashes
of this campaign will rise the Santorums of the party, trying to drag
us further right yet.

We can't afford that. Not as a party,
and not as a country. We will not benefit from having a party of
hardcore religionists, economic Darwinists, and crazies as the only
alternative to the Democratic party. The two parties together should
function to balance each other, but if the GOP continues to pull to
the right it will leave moderates with no choice but to gravitate
leftward if they dare not venture into crazyville. There will be no
balancing, no moderation left. This is not, I think, in anyone's
interest – not even the Democratic party, because competition makes
us all better.

So, please, GOP, get it together. Take
a lesson from yesterday, before it's too late.